Forum Discussion

jamesc77's avatar
jamesc77
On our wavelength
2 months ago

Port phone service (only) away from Virgin Media

Hi good people of the VM Community,

I currently have a BB + Fixed Line Phone + TV package with VM, but considering porting the phone number being using on my Fixed Line Phone service across to A&A (who offer a simple VOIP service), without impacting my other VM services or changing my current VM contract end date.

Does anyone happen to know if this is possible/has been successful doing this, and what was involved?

Soggy and windy outside with Storm Bert doing its thing, so a perfect day to cross a few admin tech jobs off the to do list 😊

number porting
Phone
  • Alex_RM's avatar
    Alex_RM
    2 months ago

    Hi jamesc77,

    Thanks for posting 😊

    If you choose to port your line over to another provider this would leave your remaining two services without your bundle discount and would usually result in a higher package price.

    If you're still within contract, you would incur an early disconnection charge for the landline.

    You can discuss re-bundling to a broadband and TV only package by calling 150/ 0345 454 1111.

    Alex_Rm

  • Adduxi's avatar
    Adduxi
    Very Insightful Person
    2 months ago

    I strongly suspect any change to your existing contract will produce a new 18 month contract at a higher price. 

  • asim18's avatar
    asim18
    Rising star
    2 months ago

    I have also been thinking about porting my VM landline over to A&A.

    The quality on VM's VoIP service is absolutely diabolical, it's worse than an actual analogue POTS line!

    A&A, or any other VoIP provider such as VOXCloud, offer absolutely brilliant sound quality and support latest HD voice codecs. VM on the other hand is going backwards, they seem to be trying to reduce quality as much as possible while the rest of the world is trying to improve quality. Bizarre.

     

    I would have assumed that porting the number to another company wouldnt change your contract, it would just make your VM phone line go dead. Just my assumption.

    • Tudor's avatar
      Tudor
      Very Insightful Person
      2 months ago

      VMs land line system is NOT a VoIP system, it’s just using a different way of presenting the signal to the same old telephone equipment at the VM ‘exchange’.

      • asim18's avatar
        asim18
        Rising star
        2 months ago

        Sorry Tudor from what I've seen it doesnt work like that.

        It's not presenting the signal at the VM "exchange".

        The Hub3 acts as a ATA device (Analogue Telephone Adapter), not the exchange. It's VoIP up to the HUB3 which is then converted to analogue.

        The backend system is all standardised VoIP.

    • jamesc77's avatar
      jamesc77
      On our wavelength
      2 months ago

      That’s what I’m hoping too asim18… With a bit of luck, one of the VM team can confirm, and give an indication of what’s involved. Or maybe someone on here has already been through the (fingers crossed, straight forward) process?!

      Having the flexibility to move ISP without having to have the faff of coordinating number porting feels like a good position to be in. Plus if I were to move, I can keep my local STD code number wherever I end up (although accept this is a lot easier than it used to be too).

       

      My VM contract comes to an end early January, so if I can move the phone service elsewhere, gives me more options/ability to compare like for like (ish) services at renewal time. Plus we now have Openreach Nd CityFibre wholesale infra running past the house, so finally some competition for decent bandwidth broadband (woohoo) - will be interesting to see how VM respond to that competition 😊

    • jamesc77's avatar
      jamesc77
      On our wavelength
      2 months ago

      Interestingly, looking at the latest packages on the VM website, I don’t get any packages offered that include a ‘fixed’ (non-mobile) phone service. Purely speculation, but does suggest packages including phone line isn’t offered to new customers anymore, which might help explain the quality deteriorating?! That said, I’m only going on the information on the headline packages pages. It maybe that if you start an order, phone line can be added… The link to bb + tv + phone takes you to bb + tv packages only though 🤔

      Regardless, I’m going off piste 😁 Just want to know if I can port my phone service elsewhere without having to extend my existing VM contract. If anyone on here has done that, or VM team could confirm, that’d be great 👍🏻 

      • Alex_RM's avatar
        Alex_RM
        Forum Team
        2 months ago

        Hi jamesc77,

        Thanks for posting 😊

        If you choose to port your line over to another provider this would leave your remaining two services without your bundle discount and would usually result in a higher package price.

        If you're still within contract, you would incur an early disconnection charge for the landline.

        You can discuss re-bundling to a broadband and TV only package by calling 150/ 0345 454 1111.

        Alex_Rm

  • asim18's avatar
    asim18
    Rising star
    2 months ago

    I can have an A&A VoIP SIP account, load it into any off the shelf ATA, then plug my analogue phone into it.

    Precicely what VM's system is.

    Doesn't suddenly stop it being a VoIP system.

     

  • asim18's avatar
    asim18
    Rising star
    2 months ago

    Also, You call it a "land line system", that's what it certainly is NOT.

    But whatever you want to call it is simply semantics, the fact remains, it's an absolutely terrible quality service.

    Also there have been reports of people being able to place a SIP call to their VM IP address and their telephone rings. Confirming that it's VoIP.

     

    Sorry cant seem to edit my posts!

    • Tudor's avatar
      Tudor
      Very Insightful Person
      2 months ago

      I’m not commenting on the quality of the service. It definitely is a landline system, it uses wires and not radio signals, what else is it? VM system at present is NOT VoIP they refer to it as 21CV I believe.

      • Roger_Gooner's avatar
        Roger_Gooner
        Alessandro Volta
        2 months ago

        Voice calls, like all other upstream traffic such as broadband, get converted by the hub's built-in ATA to digital audio which, after further processing, ends up as UDP packets in IP packets within Ethernet frames (which are further encapsulated in DOCSIS frames that are modulated using analogue QAM for RF transmission). When the packets arrive at the regional headend the signals are demodulated, the packets extracted and sent to another VM user or outside the network via a VoIP gateway.

        So, the call data is inside IP packets and it is VoIP, no need for MSAN cabinets, TDM switches and all the other kit required for PSTN.

  • asim18's avatar
    asim18
    Rising star
    2 months ago

    What I would do is let your contract almost end, then port the number out.

    Then, when you renew you can get yourself another bundle discount incliding phone line and a new number, just not use it.